Day 243: My Sweet Ginger Cream

How good is today?
In summary - full of good people, talks with strangers and those bigly beknown to me, a brand new term/concept about bikes, free food, good ideas, a swim, a walk, a singsong and a packet of biscuits. Get in.


So maybe oversleeping wasn't the best start, but breakfast with Ruth was a very good first properly awake thing to do. On the way up there, I passed a 'cycle jumble'. Wooooo! Bike porn! Well, kind of. Bike porn for people who can be bothered. It was in the hall where I parked my bike to go and look for gluten-free muffins (long story) and through the open double-doors, I saw boxes full of dismembered pedals, swaying frames and about half lycra, half cords/ill-fitting jeans. I would have gone back after for a delve (fumble/tinker), but I got a better offer in the form of Emily Cuphead Wilkinson, a very pleasing person indeed.


I was talking to the delicious, delectable Mrs Esther Lilley Harvey* on the phone outside Starbucks in Muswell Hill. I was there in a tiny grump. I'd just had more dealings with the manager of Panacea, just opposite. They're a health food shop that also sell shoes - FitFlops. Their version of customer service is so deeply shoddy that I found myself teetering between exasperation and humour. Particularly arse is the level of help of the manageress (who refused to give me her name - asked for very politely as the manager of the shop so that I could deal direct with the supplier, having had such frustrating and unwilling interactions with them at that shop). I phoned Esther Lilley partly to vent and partly because I imagined (rightly) that her laughing wisdom would make things look rosier. 


As we talked, I noticed a tall, bespectacled man sit at a nearby table. He was paying attention, kind of. He seemed interesting (to me). I would have like to talk to him. I went as far as asking him to look after my stuff while I fetched more coffee, and we exchanged a few other little things, but I chickened out of an actual proper conversation. 

**

One of the things I talked to Lilley about is this internet dating lark I've been doing. Oh dear, oh dear. You see, I'm not going to do stand-up about it, nor am I going to blame any of the men involved for their part in it. It's not them, it's me. Really. II'll try to explain. 


I get this head on when I'm going on a date. First of all, I tell myself how much I hate dating, especially internet dating (or any date where you meet a stranger and spend a few hours with them with a direct agenda of getting to know each other with the potential of romantic interest). The only time I've been able to enjoy it is when I know there's no danger of it taking off. Otherwise, I get wary and fronty. I put up a great big 'Of ccourse I can handle this' wall and I don't let any fucker near me. What a waste of time. Of course this isn't really how I want to meet potential partners, but it is what I'm doing, so why not take it that little bit more seriously? Or perhaps myself a bit less.


Yesterday, I met a lovely person, I think, but my I will not allow myself to properly relax and have a date without feeling cagey and endangered, though not in my physical person - no fear where that's concerned - how silly. In my head, I think 'try and attack me and I'll have your fkking face for breakfast', but people try to be nice and I'm some kind of impenetrable friend queen - like a Stepford Wife without any of the wifely wiles. He hasn't been in touch. Perhaps my refusal to extend the first date as far as dinner was taken as a total brush-off. Perhaps it was one. Perhaps not.  


I've been talking a lot with various good eggs about gathering up good states that come naturally with certain activities and getting them fired up during other activities where the habitual state is less useful. I know it's possible because I've done it before. Fuck, I need to do it again, and not just for other people. And SO not just in this area of my life.


I done a tangent. Sorry. 
I didn't have the nerve to engage with the engaging-looking tall man in the cafe. Not properly. I have since rationalised it and justified it, so I feel okay. It would have been a braver choice, though. And then I got a text from Emily Cuphead asking if I could make it for a swim on Hampstead Heath. YES. I would most likely not have gone, had she not texted, even though that was my intention. But I did go, and had the pleasure of her company, and the company of Hampstead Heath, for a good portion of the afternoon. Very agreeable too, it was. I'm excited by the coaching course she's just done. Sounds brilliant. Intelligent, sensitive, well ethical stuff. 

So not a pasty

I dropped down into town to drop off Rob's Oyster card, which I'd made off with by mistake on Friday. Due to a misunderstanding/me hiding by sitting on the table outside the Italian cafe I went to, the funky calzone they'd put it the oven for me was sold to someone else. They called out for me, apparently, all those handsome Italian boys, but I was not there. To make up for it, they gave me free pizza, all of which went to good homes. Best email EVAH from my good-enough-to-eat Edinburgh tenants. I love them a bit. A lot. They're just lovely. 



And when I got home, Peggy and her friend had dressed up all nice to go and have a singsong in the back room. It was supposed to be a party that didn't happen, so they dressed up anyway and cracked open a weeny bottle of Prosecco. I like 'a weeny bottle of Procscuitto' better, which is what I almost put. I joined in the song-singing (though I did not dress up). How brilliant to be able to be played for, sung for and sung with in your own home, posh frock or no. Then back upstairs to watch the Robbinator strut his oversized stuff, to my delight. 


So beat that for a day, muthas. Just beat that. 

* Check out the regal Esther Lilley in action here - she's worth moving up to York for, this one: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URTT2A8I5_I&feature=share


** Photos of Lill, and video, done by Sam Strickland, who absolutely rocks.